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Did you see the Sunday Times Real-Estate section piece on Clinton Hill? Not bad. Not great. Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/realestate/23livi.html?_r=1&ref=realestate&oref=slogin

I appreciate the writer’s admiration for the architecture. And he tried, I think, to paint an accurate picture of Clinton Hill. But he missed the point on several of the most important fronts. (Which is fine—the last thing we want is a huge influx of hedge-funders…)

The two main things I think he missed is the extent of the huge investment being made in these old houses, and the gravity of the improvement of Myrtle Avenue. There’s a dumpster on every block; new façades, new floors, new roofs, new complete renovations, new conversions everywhere on the Hill’s residential blocks. On Myrtle, yes, he notes that the vacancy rate has dropped from 20% to 8%, and leaves it at that. What he completely neglects to mention is the quality of the retail tenants; the street formerly known here as Murder Avenue has in just the last two years seen several beautiful new restaurants arrive, the area’s third wine shop, sharp boutiques, charming watering holes, new banks, glassy lofts, the new Pratt art-supply store—it’s nothing short of booming. He also seems not to notice that the lovely, bustling restaurant row on Dekalb in Ft. Greene is very much a part of the life of a Hill resident; a few minutes’ walk for me.

The writer seemed Manhattan-centric, a visitor who took a couple of strolls around the neighborhood and seemed to mainly view it through the perspective of one newbie resident family that appears to long for Park Slope.

One thing he got mostly right is that there aren’t good enough grocery stores here. However, it depends where you live. The family he cited bought on Lefferts Place, which is in the far Southern part of the Hill, and, indeed, is nowhere near a good grocery. But my house, in the Northern part, is one block away from an Associated on Myrtle that is fine for staples, has a great beer selection, and a growing organic selection (but a weak produce department, and an unacceptable meat department). Then again, as all of us in Clinton Hill know, we really are part and parcel of Ft. Greene, both neighborhoods being, actually, tiny and interconnected, and fancier groceries are freshly available at the brand-new gourmet shop Greene Grape Provisions, right next to the Lafayette stop on the C line—the train that everybody I know here uses to get into and out of Manhattan. Provisions sells everything from fresh oysters to artisanal cheeses and rack of lamb—and it’s a 10-minute walk for us.

He also has the prices wrong. There has not yet been a single 4-story brownstone that has even broken the $2 million barrier in Clinton Hill. The Pfizer mansion, which is a big, wide, 5-story joint, sold for more than $3 million, but that’s an unusual property.

Finally, what he really failed to grasp about the specialness of this place is the fabulous, friendly, bohemian mix of people here. This is a blend of workers, writers, students, artists, professors, bankers, tradesmen, lawyers, every imaginable race and income. This great mix owes its biggest debt to the stabilizing influence of Pratt Institute, god bless the place. While I think all of Clinton Hill is proud of its legacy as a bulwark of the black middle class homeowner, it is hardly a monolithic, 80-percent “minority”neighborhood reflected by the obsolete census data of 8 years ago. Fascinatingly, it also has a peculiarly large French population, which has brought many of our lovely little eateries. Much has changed in that mix over the last few years—more affluent whites, yes, but fortunately not *too * many more of them. It is a very healthy mix, something you’ll see when the 2010 census is parsed.